


The Letter That Never Came

by thesudokukid



Series: Kintsugi [2]
Category: Zombies Run!
Genre: Declarations Of Love, Emotional/Psychological Abuse, Hurt/Comfort, Implied/Referenced Mind Control, Mind Control, Other, S3M46 Spoilers, Shoot the Runner, Spoilers for Season 3, mention of suicide
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-04-19
Updated: 2020-04-19
Packaged: 2021-03-01 20:15:38
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,736
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23742910
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/thesudokukid/pseuds/thesudokukid
Summary: Wrote this because of a conversation I had with a friend where be both decided that a certain Event wouldn't have happened with our Fives. I also really liked the idea of a certain attempt actually working so I wrote this fic. All on the same day. Funnily enough, this is, yet again, inspired by Daniel Handler/Lemony Snicket. There....may be a lot of that coming from me.Title comes from hereThe link in the fic leads to the background music in that scene. Open it in a new tab if you want to listen to it while reading. I don't think the content of the fic is terribly extreme but given that it mentions a suicide note and several references to mind control, I rated it as M for safety reasons. Also I wrote this all today and wanted to post it today to celebrate that.
Relationships: Runner Five/Sam Yao
Series: Kintsugi [2]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1655731
Comments: 2
Kudos: 14





	The Letter That Never Came

**Author's Note:**

  * For [ijustcantwaittobeme](https://archiveofourown.org/users/ijustcantwaittobeme/gifts), [LonelyWanderingStars](https://archiveofourown.org/users/LonelyWanderingStars/gifts).



This is wrong. This is bad. This wrong. This is very, very bad. You can’t hurt him. He looks too much like Sam. But…

A voice that sounds almost identical to Sam’s starts snarling at you. Your heart starts racing.

“Will you stop waffling and kill him already? We don’t have all day you know!”

“Five,” the Sam-look alike says. “Are you okay?”

All you can do is stand there instead of answering. You miss home. You miss Abel. And then it hits you that the person who asked if you were okay sounded a _lot_ like Sam too. And really, who else besides Sam would take the risk of asking if the person who attacked Abel is okay?

 _Sam_ would take that risk, if it was you. Because he’d have the fullest, completest confidence that while you might hurt other people, you would never in your life, lay a hand on him. And then you can’t help but remember your worries about him. That he’d follow you into the dark, fully convinced he could guide you back to the light.

The Sam who’s currently screaming at you for being a “selfish bitch” is the fake. He has to be. But you need to be sure. You have to be sure.

You drop the axe while you have the willpower to and dig frantically through your backpack for a ziploc bag. The ziploc bag you were keeping Sam’s supposed suicide note in.

You hand it to the man you’re mostly sure is Sam. If he’s Sam, if he’s really honestly Sam, you want to know why you got that note. Why instead of being handed a suicide note full of love and apologies and a thousand blessings for you until the heat death of the universe, you got one full of hate and derision and curses being inflicted upon you until the end of time.

“I thought you hated me,” you say, before he starts reading it.

When he does, your fear of the outcome keeps your heart beating in your throat and your hands away from the axe. You won’t hurt him. You won’t hurt him. You _will not_ hurt him. You’ll shoot yourself in the head before you do that.

And then the tones start ringing out because you won’t be obedient. Because you won’t follow orders. Because you won’t bow down to a will that isn’t yours or Sam’s. The _real_ Sam’s.

That’s when it hits you that the way out of the tones isn’t logic like you’ve been trying to make it. It’s love. Love is the way out. And there’s no one on Earth you love more than Sam. And you’re pretty sure the reverse is true too.

But even so, the tones are powerful things. They start singing to you offering bliss and praise and comfort and happiness, a happily ever after for the rest of your life, if you’ll only pick up the axe. It’s a siren song that’s meant to draw you to your doom. Something like an auditory Mirror of Erised.

Only the thing you remember about that is that there was an inscription on the mirror: _I show not your face but your heart’s desire._

Well, your heart’s desire is pretty simple. You want to find the place in which you truly belong. The place where people love you and they want what’s best for you and they _encourage_ you to do good and be good, and they’re proud of you for doing the right thing even if it’s just something any normal, decent person would have done.

You want to live in a place where people are proud of you just for waking up in the morning and breathing even if it’s the only thing you’ve done all day. You want people that will celebrate your lack of a death wish with you. Where people will ask you if you’re okay and insist that it’s okay if you take a break just this once because you’ve worked so hard.

You want someone who is going to love you and hold you and tell you that everything is going to be all right. You want the family you should have had growing up. You want people who would’ve seen a little kid who didn’t talk and tried to figure out why you didn’t talk. People that wouldn’t just try to make you talk if you didn’t want to. You want people that would’ve accommodated your needs.

You want home. You want Abel. You want a Letter That Never Came. And if the person standing in front of you is Sam like you hope they are, like you’re hoping and wishing and praying they are, you’re going to get it.

Sam looks at you when he’s done reading the note. You know it’s him because he looks at you like his heart’s about to rip itself in half if he doesn’t hug you right this minute.

He doesn’t do that though.

Instead he holds up the letter in the ziploc bag and he starts listing reason after reason after reason why it’s patently untrue.

“I didn’t write this Five,” Sam begins. “I know it looks like my handwriting but it isn’t. It’s too… I know you were probably too hurt after the first couple of sentences to read it properly but if I hated you enough that the thought of you made me want to kill myself I’d have brought up the train. Or the night run. Or that time Nadia sent you into Dedlock territory. That time I thought I was going to die and told everyone to climb into the trees. Our first date in China Town. Evan abandoning us. That time he took you into an underground bunker and gave me ten seconds warning that I’d be losing a/v feeds. Or even that whole mess with Amber how she tried to make you act like a therapist when you were supposed to be acting like a Runner. You didn’t seriously think I’d forget that whole rant you went on about ‘emotional labor’ and how much of a nightmare it made your childhood did you?”

You can’t help but laugh at that, “Is that why you came in the time after that? Because you’re not normally that...overt about not trusting people to keep me safe.”

Sam shrugs, “She’d already made you have a bad run once. I was worried. I didn’t want things to go like they had before you know? Especially not since you’d had Nadia trying to kill you a couple weeks before that.”

“Thanks,” you say. “I appreciate it.”

Sam nods then at you with a smile on his face.

“I love you,” you say.

Your eyes widen at the same time as Sam’s.

Sam’s mouth drops open and your hand starts twitching. The tones start singing that this would be the perfect time to try and take him out. You ignore them the best you can and instead focus on what’s going on between you and Sam. You pour your heart out to him now that you’ve got the bravery to do so.

“I love you. I love you. And nothing is going to stop that. Not even some real-life equivalent to the Imperius Curse.”

The tones get even louder like they’re challenging you to prove it. They start singing that the pain will go away, go away, be gone and banished until the end of time if you pick up the axe. As someone who’s easily overstimulated by noise you can’t help but damn the person on the other end for making you even vaguely tempted.

“Hey, Five, they just made the tones louder didn’t they?”

You nod and crouch down, biting your lip just to feel a pain that you can control. He crouches down so he’s right next to you and holds your hand. [Something anchoring you here in reality, in the place where someone loves you.](https://youtu.be/WfIFX9Tl8RE)

“You don’t have to do what they tell you to,” Sam says. “It was bad enough that person on the other end took control of your brain from you but this? Hurting you for disobedience? They’re _abusing_ you Five. They’re _abusing_ you. And I know you probably don’t think that you have a choice right now. Your whole life you’ve never had a choice when it actually mattered. You’ve felt like a puppet your whole entire life but you’re not Five. You’re not. You’re a person. You’re a person with thoughts and feelings and passions and hurts just like everyone else is.

"And yeah, maybe sometimes you need me a bit more than I’d like but if you think for a second that I want you to be perfect just so you never need me again you’re wrong. I love you because you’re _not_ perfect. I love you because you know that you’re not but you keep trying to be anyway. I love you because you could’ve walked down the same path everyone else in your family has but you _chose_ not to. And even though today’s the first time that you’ve told me you love me, I’ve never doubted it. Why would I?

"You’ve tried to be more public about your feelings and with intimacy because you know I need that kind of thing and… And today only makes me more sure than ever that you love me because you’re trying so hard to fight against the tones telling you to hurt me. I promise I’ve never doubted that you love. I promise. You can do this, okay? I _promise_ that you can do this. And even if you don’t make it the whole way through it’s okay. Because I love you and I know you’ve tried your hardest today to prove that you love me too. It’s okay. I’m still going to love you no matter what happens today. It’s okay. Okay? It’s all okay.”

And there it is. There’s your Letter That Never Came. Sam helps you up off the ground and dusts you off before _handing_ you the axe. The tones have stopped singing. The only one in your head is you. Your brain is yours. You take the axe and turn on your heel with your back towards Sam. No one and nothing is going to hurt the person that loved you enough to give you the letter that you needed so badly.

Nothing.

**Author's Note:**

> You know what I just realized? Just now? This isn't just the second fic with a title that was inspired by Daniel Handler. This is also the second fic I've written that relates to That Incident. That's a little bit weird, isn't it?


End file.
